It took lightyears for 'Star Wars' fashion to finally include women

If you’ve unexpectedly found yourself lusting after a pair of blue R2-D2 pumps or coveting CoverGirl’s Dark Side mascara, it’s not a Jedi mind trick. Star Wars is currently the biggest trend in fashion — everyone from Uniqlo to Diane von Furstenberg has collaborated with the sci-fi franchise.

“We [women] were lucky to get t-shirts made for us five years ago,” recalls Star Wars: The Clone Wars voice actress Ashley Eckstein, who was working on the animated television series when she spotted a gap in the market for female-oriented Star Wars products five years ago. That led to her founding women’s apparel company Her Universe, which now produces everything from Darth Vader dresses to lightsaber skirts. “Half of all Star Wars fans are women, and the reality is that these items are being made because fans want them,” Ashley tells Mashable.

Image: CoverGirl

“Historically, Star Wars has predominantly been marketed to the masculine fan base,” agrees Dan Sullivan, founder of British shoe brand Irregular Choice, which recently launched a Star Wars-inspired range of pumps and ballet slippers. “We wanted to acknowledge the ladies out there who love it also, by offering girly heels and delicate flats.”

Another fashion designer who has collaborated with Star Wars but asked not to be named admitted that the license was “really lucrative," which is not altogether surprising given the historic lack of female-oriented Star Wars products.

The ladies are lapping it up.

Image: Irregular Choice

With its universally appealing storyline and gorgeous visuals — not to mention kickass female protagonists — Star Wars has always had legions of female fans, but they were until relatively recently inexplicably ignored by manufacturers and marketers.

"Sure, some things were made specifically for females in a wider market, but the choices were really limited — and pink," explains Nina Penalosa, a Star Wars superfan from California who runs geek lifestyle and fashion blog lefancygeek.com.

A look from Hot Topic's Star Wars collaboration line.

Image: Hot Topic

"All of a sudden we're getting not just t-shirts but dresses, skirts, jackets and more," she says, crediting the establishment of Her Universe, which has since expanded into other traditionally male licenses, such as Doctor Who and Marvel.

While Her Universe soon dominated the mid-price market, high-end designers such as Rodarte, Preen and Bobby Abley were quick to capitalize on the momentum, sending models down the catwalk wearing expensive ensembles featuring characters such as Darth Vader, C-3PO and Yoda, further encouraged by the prospect of a new Star Wars film, Episode VII: The Force Awakens, on the horizon.

It is this latest film that has really given Disney, which bought the rights to the franchise in 2012, an opportunity to speak directly to fangirls. “Star Wars was always...a boys’ thing and a movie that dads take their sons to,” Episode VII director J.J. Abrams admitted on Good Morning America in early December. “And though that’s still very much the case, I was really hoping that this could be a movie that mothers could take their daughters to, as well.”

The first step was to cast more women, which Abrams has done in the form of Daisy Ridley, Lupita Nyongo’o and Gwendoline Christie, who plays Captain Phasma. The shift thrilled long-term female fans but also provided Disney with the opportunity to appeal to new ones — Ridley appeared on the December covers of both ELLE and British Glamour.

Disney has also used fashion itself as a marketing tool, launching designer-led charitable initiatives such as Force 4 Fashion in New York and Fashion Finds the Force in London, commissioning brands such as Furstenberg, Opening Ceremony and Preen to create Star Wars-inspired outfits to be auctioned off for charity.

For the designers involved, many of whom have grown up with the films, it’s a dream come true.

“There’s so much stuff you can take from it and interpret into a garment or a product,” says London designer Bobby Abley, who participated in the London event, Fashion Finds the Force, and whose June collection was Star Wars-inspired. “There’s so many characters, so many great visuals, I guess it’s hard for creative people to stay away from it.”

Abley’s creations include jogging pants and sweaters emblazoned with Captain Phasma’s helmet and a twisted version of the film’s logo. Other Fashion Finds the Force creations included an X-wing-inspired jumpsuit from Peter Pilotto and a Swarovski-encrusted jumpsuit from Claire Barrow that was modeled, together with a specially designed prosthetic arm, by actress Grace Mandeville.

Even those brands who aren’t working directly with Disney have been influenced by the intergalactic franchise, notes Hollywood stylist Micaela Erlanger, who is styling John Boyega and Lupita Nyong’o for The Force Awakens red carpet and press tour.

"There's been a lot of very exciting things on the runway from this past season that have really embraced that futuristic feel,” she tells Mashable, citing Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs and David Koma in particular.

For those hoping to incorporate a little bit of Star Wars into their outfits without totally going over to the Dark Side, Erlanger advises trying “metallic leathers, metallic fabrics, velvets, anything with a little bit of shine is fun. I’m really having fun experimenting with performance fabrics and leathers and neoprene.”

But perhaps the best outcome of the explosion in Star Wars-branded products is that it has not only given women an opportunity to demonstrate their love of the film franchise — as men have been able to do for so long — but signaled a top-down message that there is a place for them in the Star Wars universe.

“When we started way back when in 2010, female fans were being bullied, they were being made fun of for their love of Star Wars,” Ashley Eckstein remembers.

“So when I see a company like Rodarte or Preen stepping onto the runway, saying that Star Wars is fashion forward, all it means is that it's going to become a more accepting environment and less and less female fans are going to be bullied for just being who they are.”

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